They may be said, certainly, to form a clique, and to have strong party interests also; but then, their clique is so large a one that the prominent features of narrow- mindedness and utter selfishness, which distinguish smaller coteries, are lost in its more extended circle; while, its interests are self- centred, its members having nothing to fear or expect from the outside public.
And yet, with all that good fellowship and staunch fidelity, as a class--when personal pique, and what I might call "promotion jealousy," does not interfere to mar the warm sympathies that exist between the units of this officially happy family--Government clerks are a very discontented set of men, grumbling from morning until night at their position, their prospects, their future.
Really, when I first joined, I thought them all so many Lady Dashers in disguise.

I could hardly believe that such cheerful fellows should be at heart so morbidly exacerbated! They do not, it is true, grumble at those of their own standing in the service; nor do they try to out-manoeuvre their fellows of the same department; but, third-class men are jealous of those in the second- class, second-class men of lucky "seniors," hankering after their shoes; and all, alike envious, both individually and collectively, of other branches, unite in one compact band of martyrs against the encroachments and tyrannies of higher officialdom--considering chiefs, secretaries of state, and such like birds of ill-omen, as virtual enemies and oppressors, with whom they are bound to prosecute a perpetual guerilla warfare:--a warfare in which, alas! they are sadly over-matched.
Smith does not mind in the least--that is, as far as human nature can be magnanimous--that Robinson, of his own office, should be preferred before him, and raised to a superior grade in advance of his legitimate turn.

He may, undoubtedly, believe it to bear the semblance of "hard lines" to himself personally, that he was not chosen instead; still, he puts it all down to Robinson's wonderful luck, and his own miserable fatality, bearing his successful comrade no ill-will in consequence.
But, let Jones, of another branch, be placed in the vacancy;--just hear what Smith says then! Words would fail to express his sentiments in the matter.
Jones, he considers, is a nincompoop, who has fed all his life on "flap- doodle," which, as you may be aware, Lieutenant O'Brien told Peter Simple was the usual diet of fools.

Jones is a man _totally_ devoid of all moral principle.

How "the authorities" could ever have selected such a person to fill so responsible a post is more than he, Smith, or any one else, can understand! And, besides, how unfair it was, to take a clerk from another and different office--and one essentially of a lower character, Smith believes--and put him "over our heads in this way," as he says, when rehearsing his wrongs and those of his official brethren before a choice audience of the same--from which the chief is the only absentee:--it was, simply disgraceful! Smith thinks he "will certainly resign after this," and--he doesn't! He goes on plodding round in his Government mill, grumbling and working still to the end of his active life, when superannuation or a starvation allowance comes, to ease his cares in one way and increase them in another! And, to do him scant justice, he really _does_ work manfully, at a lesser rate of pay, and with fewer incentives to exertion through hopes of advancement, than any other representative person under the sun--I do not care to what class or clique he may belong! He is the miserable hireling of an ungrateful country, from his cradle to his grave, in fact.
It is all very well for people unacquainted with the machinery of these offices to talk about the idleness of Government clerks generally; and joke at the threadbare subject of "her Majesty's hard bargains." No doubt, some places are sinecures, and that a larger number of clerks are employed in many offices than there is work for them to do; but, we must not go altogether to the foot of the ladder to remedy this state of things! Why do not such ardent reformers as Mr Childers, and men of his stamp, cut down their own salaries first, before they set about pruning those of poor ill-paid subordinates?
I can tell them, for their private satisfaction, that, if they did so, the onlooking public would have a much stronger belief in the honesty of their reformatory zeal than it at present possesses! It is not the "little men" that swell the civil list, as the vicar told me before I saw it for myself, but, the "big wigs." These are the ones who fatten on the estimates, the root of the evil lying concealed under the snugly-cushioned fauteuils of cabinet ministers and their pampered placeholders and hunters--not, beneath the straight-backed horsehair chairs of miserable clerks.